


we could leave

by Anonymous



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26904631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "-but I thought it'd be nice to leave a gesture of good faith. There are diamonds and netherite in my castle, under the throne. If you can find a good time to sneak in, it's all yours. We're..." Eret glances at the hanging cape, choosing his words carefully as rapid footsteps begin to approach. "We're starting again. I think that's right. No bad blood, hopefully.""I literally broke off my engagement just to get this far," adds Fundy miserably. "We're serious about this, and I wanted you to know that. That even if you're not invited...we're not leaving to antagonise you." His whiskers twitch like they do when he lies, even though there's no reason to, not when Wilbur is already trembling with white-hot fury. "This has been coming for a very long time."---Fundy and Eret leave next. They are not the first, and they are not the last. Five days left, and Wilbur tires of traitors.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 191
Collections: Anonymous





	1. one week left

Wilbur might just be losing his fucking mind. The shadows on the walls of the commune taunt him in voices he half-remembers. Every distant footfall is an assassination in the making, every drop of rain is a hail of arrows.

He stops going outside. Where is everyone? Have Tommy and Techno both abandoned him already? It was only a matter of time, but the cave is so echoing and dark and so _empty._

Yes, it's empty, it's so empty the morning Tommy really does leave. Wilbur is perched on the bed in the lobby of Pogtopia, the grip of a loaded crossbow rubbing welts into his palms. Eating and sleeping are harder, now, and he forgoes them in favour of protecting the meagre semblance of home he has left. Fucking _Wilbur_ _Soot,_ reduced to primitive survivalist materialism. The critics would weep.

"I'm sorry," Tommy tells him with downcast eyes and a sword the size of his torso. "I really am. But I have Tubbo back. We have the discs. We've decided to go."

He doesn't scream or shout or stamp his foot. He doesn't even ask where they're going to go. It makes perfect sense. Nobody can be trusted. Not even his most loyal lieutenant. Maybe it's a good thing; he'll be far away on the day of the festival. Two right hand men, two browbeaten sidekicks, two teenagers who have had enough of the adults' childishness. What a delightful parallel. "And you were right, you know," adds Tommy awkwardly when there's no response.

Listless, limbs weighed down with fatigue, dangling on the precipice of dangerous euphoria, Wilbur tilts his head to look Tommy directly in the eye.

"Oh? Right about what?" Tommy shifts uncomfortably under his gaze and shrugs.

"You...Well, that...I. I, uh. I was never going to be President."

Tubbo is waiting outside the ravine with two bulging backpacks. He blinks at Wilbur mildly, without judgment. Who does he think he's kidding? The little shit has all of them wrapped around his finger, Tommy most of all. Miserable traitors, the lot of them. If he can't trust the literal children to stay by his side, if only from dumb devotion, who the absolute fuck can he trust? Nobody, that's who. Eret, Fundy, Jack, Tubbo, Tommy, all of them traitors and all of them gone and all of them wrong and oh _God_ what will he do without Niki? How long does he have until she turns on him? What then?

Both of them, it strikes him then with frenzied understanding, are wearing their old clothes. The t-shirt is wrinkled, and the shirt is as poorly buttoned as ever. No more uniforms. No more heavy woollen coats or slick tailored suits. Just childhood and a friend and the final freedom of escape.

Without looking at him, Tommy holsters his sword and scritches at the guard dog's ears. He looks utterly wrecked. The weak, desperate parts of Wilbur yearn to apologise, to repent, to throw himself on his vice president's easy forgiveness. It's rather too late for that.

After all, he's been the villain to at least someone since the beginning. To his acquaintances, to his friends, to his own goddamned son. It's about fucking time he started playing the part.

"You go ahead," Tubbo encourages Tommy, and he instantly does despite his clenched fists. There's a look in the younger boy's eyes that Wilbur has only seen once before, an amalgam of grim determination and sheer hopelessness. Back in the bunker it had saved them all. Now it makes him malleable, miserable, a living ghost. Wilbur has broken people for his story, he realises. In a world where dying is but a temporary inconvenience, war merely a complex game of ideals and perseverance, he has pushed his friends too far.

Time to follow through.

He stands, first to wipe off his cloak and then to swipe unreasonable tears from his eyes. Then he startles and almost falls over its hem; in the doorway Tubbo is waiting patiently, silently, politely. "If Niki gets hurt, I will fucking kill you," he says cheerily, twirling an enchanted axe around his fingers in a blur of purple mist - and then he trots after Tommy into the woods without another word. After a moment of canine contemplation, the dog bounds over to his side.

Wilbur sits alone until the boys' relieved chatter is indistinguishable from the unaffected ambience of the forest. Neither of them look back.


	2. six days left

Without the levity afforded by Tubbo and Tommy, there's a sour tension in the air. Lethargy halts Wilbur's movements and crawls into his joints. It's noon before he can bear to move. Nobody, after all, can say otherwise. So he doesn't find out about the desolate feel of Manberg until lunch, and it hits him like a train.

"They didn't realise until this morning," Techno says, gruff as he reaches over to pass Wilbur a lukewarm baked potato. He looks at it, shivers, begins to chew. It tastes like starch and smog.

At least Techno is still here for him. A part of him knows that it's just the shock of losing Tommy that prompts this thought - that latching onto Technoblade of all people as a bastion of loyal fortitude is not the path to a happy ending. But he needs another betrayal like Mary Berry needs a cookbook, so he plays a wonderful game of pretend.

Here is how the game goes. Wilbur Soot's best friend Technoblade doesn't stab him in the back. They blow up Manberg in a shower of debris and triumph and then they...

And then they...

"They seemed pretty shaken up," Techno continues obliviously, spearing bread on his sword for later. It's one of a million little habits Wilbur has always found endearing, but today he can't even crack a smile at the sight. Of course Tubbo would fuck off at the first sign of real conflict, of confrontation that meant something, but Tommy would rather die than leave a cause. Sunk-cost fallacy is practically his middle name. It can't be as simple as that.

It's not his fault, naturally. It's Techno that tells him to get some air, to feel the sun on his back. "To contribute," he points out with friendly snark. He has a point.

So Wilbur is chopping wood on vaguely-defined neutral ground when he comes across Schlatt. There is no persona today. He is drunk and tear-stained and viciously raw.

When he catches sight of Wilbur, he staggers up to the treeline with rage in his eyes. He can't find it in himself to move. Senile old goats were never the real enemy, and so he lets Schlatt rain useless blows on his chest.

"Fuck you!" he roars, and the forest goes silent as Wilbur attempts hesitantly to explain. Every time he tries to speak, a fist thumps in vain against his ribs. "Fuck you, Soot! No, I don't care, fuck you! What did you tell him? What did you do? Fuck you!"

"Tommy left too," he breathes when he can get a word in, and Schlatt freezes to make frenzied eye contact. His eerie bovine pupils are blown wide with alcohol and misery. "They're....hah, they're tired of us, I think. Tired of Manberg, L'Manberg, Pogtopia, the DreamSMP. It's as simple as that." It is, he reflects angrily, as simple as that.

Nodding sluggishly, Schlatt slumps against him. He smells like beer and smoke. It's an awful parallel to their old power dynamic, back when they were daredevil kids with something to prove. Wilbur could point him in a direction and wait for the mobs to descend. Hardly justice, but it would certainly make the both of them feel better.

To his confusion and mild disgust, Schlatt starts crying. Mumbling about his right hand man, gasping about democracy and Tubbo and George and Tubbo and festivals and Tubbo. The flare of savage anger under his lashes is not that of genuine ire but of pure panic. He stands completely still and drops his axe to the ground.

How long he's been watching them Wilbur doesn't know, but after a few distressing minutes Alexis stalks into the clearing like a bloodhound and blinks. His jaw is set, his eyes slivers of resentment. But when he sees Schlatt, sees Wilbur, sees the axe, the covetous rigidity of his muscles falls into pure concern.

What must it be like, Wilbur ponders as he watches Quackity stumble over roots to get to them, to be so devoted to another person? He'd expected the very same from his friends - from his _followers_ \- but just the mere thought of it sickens him, now that the tables are turned. Quackity's adoration makes him weak. It makes him soft and predictable and pitifully sad.

Foolishly, he does not even attempt to harm Wilbur. (Foolishly, he had not even attempted to harm Schlatt.) He simply unhooks Schlatt's clawed hands from his cloak with placid civility, turns around and begins to lead him home.

Devoid of all context, it's a downright innocent image. A rambling drunkard guided to safety by a younger, more responsible friend. Wilbur watches them go and idly wonders how far he could throw an iron axe. Just hypothetically.

By evening he has retreated to the well-mapped crevices of Pogtopia. The hypothetical miseries that haunt in the corners of his vision in the ravine are nothing, _nothing,_ in comparison to the pain on Schlatt's face. Strong people like that aren't supposed to feel that kind of wrenching, all-consuming agony. Perhaps Wilbur was wrong, and Schlatt has never been strong at all.

During one of their rare moments of shared lucidity, Techno informs him that the First Gentleman's quarters have been burned to the ground. The wreckage at the back of the White House lies empty. Nobody has seen him since, but a horse is missing. Two and two form an unfortunate four.

Oddly animated by the news, Wilbur drums his fingers on his leg and watches the flames snap hungrily at the air. Techno's crown is sitting on the ledge where they keep firewood, the heavy metal made ethereal by firelight. All is peaceful.

"You one for the philosophy classics, Technoblade?" he asks casually. "Kierkegaard? Hegel?" Pretentious as it might be, he enjoys reciting old words when thinking up his own. He's just that kind of person. Alexis is evidently not that kind of person.

Why is he getting so wound up about this? Quackity was an underappreciated, but nonetheless foolish advisor with a fat ass. The decision made sense. Him leaving means nothing more than the gradual collapse of an enemy administration. At best a cause for celebration, at worst nothing of any importance.

But he so clearly adores Schlatt. There must have been some disagreement with George, or over Tubbo. It can't be as simple as that.

As he frets, the unrestrained glee of an English major given quarter spreads slowly across Techno's face. His facial muscles seem unused to the contortion.

"I always liked Foucault," he admits dryly, as blind as ever to Wilbur's extremely important internal monologue, "but we usually studied a little closer to home. Big Goffman stan, the Blade, that's somethin' they don't know." Then he frowns, glances at Wilbur thoughtfully. "Symbolic interactionism..."

"Hm?"

"Nothin'. What'd you wanna say?"

"Sartre," says Wilbur simply. "I'm feeling Sartre tonight."

 _"This bronze,"_ he whispers, and Techno follows the line of his gaze to the crown in bemused puzzlement. " _Yes, now's the moment; I'm looking at this thing on the mantelpiece, and I understand that I'm in hell._ " His last real friend in the entire world clicks his fingers in sudden understanding.

"Ah. Clever, I get it. It's a bit dark, but I guess-"

 _"I tell you,"_ Wilbur interrupts, " _everything's been thought out beforehand. They knew I'd stand at the fireplace stroking this thing of bronze, with all those eyes intent on me. Devouring me._ " Such a powerful line. There are eyes everywhere; to catch them all in the act you'd have to spin forever, chase your own tail into the darkness. He feels them on him now. One pair is narrowed with worry. " _What? Only two of you? I thought there were more; many more._ " Sartre was so right, he thinks, and yet so very wrong. Garcin should have tried violent revolution. If nothing else he would have felt better, smashing the mirrors Inez offered before they could psyche him out so efficiently.

Maybe Inez and Esme should have left Garcin in the room and struck out by themselves. Or maybe they should have been loyal, true supporters and helped him burn hell to the ground with all of them in it. That wouldn't have even compromised the themes.

It is important to note that Technoblade never looks uncomfortable. He looks uncomfortable now, as Wilbur stands up to stare slackly at the spot where Tommy used to sit and mumble. The kid would make a shitty joke, defuse the bomb in Wilbur's head that hurts so bad against his skull, stop this all before it starts. " _So this is hell. I'd never have believed it_."

"Wilbur," Techno says with, for him, remarkable tact. One hand drifts to where the pommel of his sword should be on instinct, flutters like a paper bird when it isn't there. Are the machinations of betrayal even something he notices? "You good, man?"

He is perfectly fine.

" _You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the burning marl. Old wives' tales!_ " yells Wilbur brilliantly, spinning in lop-sided nauseating circles and lost in the rhythm of the words, and Techno has to shove him roughly away from the campfire before his cloak sets on fire. Good man, kind man. His new right hand man, his last man. " _There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell,_ " and he can't breathe, he needs to get out, it's so cold, the fire's too close and he's still so cold and somebody is laughing so hard it tears itself out of his chest - _"Hell,_ Technoblade, _is other_ fucking _people!"_

He's panting, sweaty and feverish with zeal and intensity, and Techno is glowering at him as if he's gone mad. As if he isn't perilously, uniquely sane.

Poor Quackity. Wilbur hopes he finds happiness, or at least a creeper. As his head hits the pillow, he hears Techno block up the doorway behind him. Usually he tries to stop the shivers and the thoughts and the terrrible, terrible ideas. Tonight, though, Wilbur lets paranoia rock him to sleep.


	3. five days left

By the next morning, an ailment adjacent to a migraine has taken root in the nape of Wilbur's neck. A tight ball of unspecific pain, not pulsing or stabbing or anything specific except awfully present. For hours he lies and aches and argues with sleep. It's Techno who eventually wakes him up proper, uncovering the doorway with his arms full of dynamite. Satisfied amusment plays across his lips. The creases in his palms glitter with redstone dust. It says something, Wilbur decides, that the image is a comforting one.

"You got really into it last night," is all Techno says as he hangs up his robe and disappears to bundle the remaining explosives. It's a pretty, royal kind of crimson. Red wine. Fresh blood. Rust in rain. What Techno is the king of these days, he couldn't say. Antarctica, somewhere. The skies themselves, somewhere else. Here? Well. Here, it's just a costume.

Wilbur doesn't think about it as any more than a costume. That would just be paranoid.

At the exact second he thinks the last word, his son falls through the wall.

"So _that's_ where the door is," Fundy snickers as he dusts himself off, and a deep chuckle echoes from behind him. "Oh, shit." Speechless, Wilbur can almost hear the neurosis chiding him. Why should he get to let his guard down? Why should the world let up, for one forsaken second? Why should he get to rest, when there's so much to be done? And yet. what a harsh reminder for the world to pick.

Useless and quiet, he watches Eret clamber over the rocks behind his son, watches him narrowly avoid snagging his royal mantle on a spike of andesite. "Hi, Dad." Fundy's tail lashes back and forth nervously, stirring a cloud from the loose earth. He's wearing his old striped jacket over suit trousers, which feels less like compromise than a slap in the face. The custom uniform had taken weeks to sew. It had a tail slit, for fuck's sake. But that's not the point. The point is that even now, Fundy eschews his gifts to side with those offering power and influence. Smart boy. In any other world, he'd be proud.

"Bad and I found your base weeks ago," says Eret in answer to his silent question, like it's a fun little factoid, like it doesn't tear Wilbur apart at the seams.

Oh no. It's not safe here. He's not safe here, in his last refuge, his last resort. This just proves what he's known all along - that nobody can be trusted, that everyone will leave. Because why else would these two come here, if not to say goodbye? His own son, his old friend.

When he comes back to himself, he's panting and shaking with his back pressed to cool stone. It leaches the heat away even through his cloak. He's so, so cold. Fundy's face is a mask of astounded horror. "Woah, dude. You good? Here, calm, shoosh." Alastair goes to pacify him, and Wilbur snatches his arm away with a glare like acid. They look hurt, and before straightening their sunglasses and reasserting his lazy grin, confused. How dare he look hurt? "Anyway, things have gone tits-up in Manberg - and in the DreamSMP, if you'd believe it." Things aren't looking good for people with," he motions to Fundy lucidly, "naturally divided loyalties. I'm aware you don't really want to see us right now-"

That's an understatement. As Eret dares to be pleasant, has the impudence to be amicable whilst poisoning the mind of Wilbur's only son, he seethes. Corruption in the name of politics, he could understand and almost forgive. Fundy always had learned best by example. But consorting with the traitor, of all people, the man despised by practically all and trusted by precisely none, borders on sentimental stupidity. And that is truly unforgivable. 

"-but I thought it'd be nice to leave a gesture of good faith. There are diamonds and netherite in my castle, under the throne. If you can find a good time to sneak in, it's all yours. We're..." He glances at the hanging cape, choosing his words carefully as rapid footsteps begin to approach. "We're starting again. I think that's right. No bad blood, hopefully."

"I literally broke off my engagement just to get this far," adds Fundy miserably. "We're serious about this, and I wanted you to know that. That even if you're not invited...we're not leaving to antagonise you." His whiskers twitch like they do when he lies even though there's no reason to, not when Wilbur is already trembling with white-hot fury. "This has been coming for a very long time."

Before he has the time to concoct an appropriately scathing expression of utter dislike, Techno skids into the room behind Wilbur with a sword and shield at the ready. For a moment everyone just stares at the ridiculously powerful weapon. Enchantments swirl around the sharp edge, so many that the very air fizzes with sharp ozone, tingling on his tongue. The tension in the cave crystallises almost audibly. Then Floris snarls at his father, an animalistic growl that sends the room into total fight-and-flight. There's another second of silence, and a piggish sigh as diamond clatters against granite. They lunge.

There isn't even time to get a good hit in before Techno seizes Fundy in a firm, painless headlock with seemingly no effort at all. Eret, who doesn't know how to fight and never has, just builds walls to hide behind like the coward he is, simply knocks Wilbur to the ground and holds him there at Techno's exasperated command. One of them is admittedly taller and faster, but one of them has eaten more than carbohydrates in recent memory. So there is no real fight in the way Wilbur flails and yells and curses. When he goes limp to catch a breath Eret hoists them both to their feet; the false monarch's heartbeat thumps like a rabbit's against his own. Once a coward, always a goddamn coward.

"My son, my fucking son," he roars in Fundy's general direction, "all for you, I promised you this world, all of it for you, what your mother would say, I was right to drum a little respect into you, I gave you the rights Dream wouldn't, I made a nation, ungrateful little fuck, I did my absolute best and you're leaving me for this bastard-"

It's manic nonsense, and it keeps on spewing out of him like horrible bile. But it's the truth. This emerging pattern of grim doublethink hurts even more than his headache, the ghostly feeling seeping down through his fingertips and into the voice he has made raw by screaming. He makes eye contact with Techno, who tilts his head and looks steadily back. There is no judgment there, and this buoys him.

"No, no, no," and it's a grounding chant, downright religious with rage, "you never trusted me, I'd ruin you but you'll do it first, you say you're my dad, you're crazy, you're fucked, I'm fucking twenty, so just fight me, fight me like the man I am, I'm going to fucking gut you, if I ever see you again, if you come anywhere _near_ us, I swear-"

Equally incensed, Fundy claws at Techno's sleeves and thrashes like there's no tomorrow. Well. There is no tomorrow, not for long, but he doesn't know that. The antipathy of argument breaks over their shoulders in a scalding, roiling wave.

How long they stand and shout at each other is impossible to determine. It's the culmination of everything - every purposeful slight of Fundy's talents, every ungrateful rejection of Wilbur's acumen, all of it laid bare and stark and cruel. With customary stoicism Techno just listens and watches and absorbs it all like a sponge. By now they've stopped struggling altogether in favour of finding the cruelest words to hurl, but somewhere around "worst thing that ever happened to me" it's Eret that starts to cry.

It's not unsubtle, and Wilbur only notices when tears spatter the arch of his neck, but it's enough to shock him into silence. Fundy follows suit and goes still in the space of an instant, lips still drawn back over his teeth in the midst of some gnashing caricature of glee. The wild animal that might have once been his son looks perversely amazed.

He has to agree despite himself. Watching Eret cry - watching them let go of Wilbur completely, sag against the rock and cry silently, unobtrusively - is desperately strange. It's just not how that kind of person behaves. Surely Wilbur hasn't lost his ability to judge one's character any more aggressively than he had before. It's hard to gauge the nuance of it even when Eret takes off those blasted sunglasses to wipe his face. The soft, lamplike glow lightens up the bedroom, but it does not illuminate their state of mind like Schlatt's bottomless pupils had. Like Quackity's had. Like Tommy and Tubbo's twin steely glares had.

Like Fundy's do now, his gaze flashing a catlike chartreuse that reflects back the light of Eret's suffering. Wilbur wishes they wouldn't do that; Fundy has never looked less human. His ears quiver with indecision, an old tell that feels like cheating, and he very resolutely does not look at the Pogtopians as he pads over to Eret and readjusts their crooked crown. You'd never notice, not unless you knew him, but Techno watches the movement with something like hunger in the curve of his smile.

"We'll get out of your hair now." Eret's voice is hoarse. "Enjoy the festival." There is nothing more to say. The gulf between him and Floris has grown too deep. The trust between him and Alastair has lain in pieces for months. All is fair, alas, in love and war.

Completely ignoring the fugitives' awkward exit, Techno crouches to pick up his sword and tuts, smoothing out some non-existent dirt. After a while he glances up at Wilbur and chuckles.

"Y'know, if I've said this once," he rolls his shoulders where Fundy elbowed him, "I’ve said it a million times - your friends are so weird."

"They're not my-" He sighs, long and low, and begins to patch up the entryway. "Not now, Techno."

"A'ight."

Privately, and with such savagery that even he recognises the need for a period of introspection, Wilbur almost wishes he had kept the crossbow to hand. Resolving to be armed at all times from now on, he tills fallow soil in a scheming sulk until even Techno thinks they should both rest. He tries not to think about his son's tangled fur and Eret's uncharacteristic meekness.

He fails.


End file.
